


Ramshackle

by RlOT



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-31 21:13:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21152291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RlOT/pseuds/RlOT
Summary: Abandon all sense of purpose.





	Ramshackle

It's been approximately three cycles since separation. The crash was brutal and unexpected, sending us flying in all directions, and I wondered briefly before the impact if we would survive this one. 

All vital systems intact and functional: optics, audio, tactile, olfactory, vocal processor, core processor, et cetera. My confirmation is a mixture of relief and disappointment that's hard to parse. The signal is lost, leaving me - not stranded, never - but with no way to access the status of the people I came here with. As a Communications Officer, this is beyond problematic. It's a failure. 

I do not fail.

I push through the debris, knee-high piles of rusted garbage scattered across the remains of a once great city. The planet it rests on is still generating enough thermal energy to be worth a long and grating trip alongside Starscream and Rumble, so it's entirely possible that the others have continued the mission without me. If there is one thing to be certain of when working under Megatron, it's that everyone is expendable at the price of progress. To rely upon the people who willingly give themselves to a cause like that is to organize your own murder. You need to be an anchor, or you'll get swept up in the tide.

There's movement to my left, and a slide of my heels. With a blunt kick, I send a refrigeration unit tumbling down the metal mountain until there's a sudden drop, and it disappears from view. I don't hear it hit the ground. I turn the other way.

Time passes, and soon I'm transitioning from wading through a solid sea to standing in a barren wasteland. What was surely once a busy street. I'd already been briefed on this planet and it's grim fate some meta-cycles before, expecting to find it a bland stop at best. My presence here is only a prerequisite in case some sapient life happened to grow or travel here in the time it's been rotting, to help snuff it out if need be. When I feel my systems stir at the sight of a perfectly preserved storefront, I assume something inside me got jostled when I landed.

No living creature has touched this place since the population became extinct. I go inside nonetheless, and the dust kicks up like snow when the old door swings open. I take in the view in the hopes that it'll return me to the state of feeling nothing, the optimal state for rational action. Packages, cans, tubes, bags, and bottles line every available surface save for the counter. This is a place for food-based monetary exchange, still littered with tiny echoes of the past. The space has a faint smell locked in its walls like an old carcass might be lying just outside of my view, and I don't bother to check if I'm correct. I'm not here for sentiment. Curiosity, at most. I pry open the cash register and take the paltry coins from inside, leaving a trail of footprints in the floor's grey film, and turn back through the entrance.

When I return, the silence of a dead city is cut through with Starscream's shrill voice squawking to someone in a heated rant. Unmistakable in its volume and vitriol. It's far away from me, enough that I can't see him from my right or my left. A signal for us to regroup and go along with our original plan; to drain this planet of its last resource, then contact Megatron for an impromptu pickup with the hopes that we can all get out of this situation unscathed. I take a few steps toward the voice, and then stop with no reason to stop, because the feeling is still there. I turn back in the opposite direction, gazing out at the rest of the yawning ghost town. Plenty of pasts left unexplored. I start walking until I can't hear him anymore.

I do the same with the rest of the buildings as I did with the store. I open the door, analyze the enclosed rooms frozen in the last moments of an entire civilization, take an item of value, and leave. I store everything I find in my chest compartment for reasons out of my current realm of thought, but the sensation is one that i find satisfaction in. Different storefronts lead into residential areas where the remnants of private lives lay coated in everything from soot to mold. It's only when I reach the final house, void of everything save for a child's plastic toy robot, that I stop. I put the robot in my chest and take my leave.

When I hear Starscream again, I follow his voice through thick fog.

"... can't imagine the kind of ferocity - the tenacity - the bombacity - I'll bet it was sabotage! Megatron's been itching to dispose of me, and this is all the proof I need that he's truly getting scared now! Don't you see?!" Everything from his attitude to his body language is wild and high-strung, not fit for a Decepticon of his standing. When he spots me, he makes his quick approach with a scowl, leaving Rumble to stare after him. Starscream makes like he's looking for a fight, but I know better. I see the coward trying to assimilate into the cruelty around him and overcompensating, scrambling for power to hide the inner crisis. I see his desperation. I know it well. "You! Where have you been?! I saw you wandering off from the crash site and you completely ignored -!" He moves to grab me by the shoulder. Violent intent.

I close my hand around his throat and squeeze.

"I - gchhk! L - of - m - wave!" he grits out, fiery red optics pinched as his false bravado wavers into panic. His cold fingers scratch at me, then punch me in the side of the helm, and I know I could do it. I could let this serve as a warning and leave my duties behind if I so wished, rescind my title in exchange for independence and travel the stars until the spark inside of me fizzles away into nothing. Abandon all sense of purpose. Create myself anew.

But I don't. Instead, I release my hold and let him stumble away like a beaten dog, wheezing and heaving until once again he's capable of speech. His meager attempt at intimidation stomped into the dirt. "Well - hhhhhh, well you make a good point! Let's hhh - let's keep going, then." He dusts himself off and turns at a perfect 90 degree angle, stomping away and humming a tune as if he wasn't just minutes away from potentially losing his life. As all of us do, day in and day out. This is nothing new. Not to me, not to any Decepticon or Autobot anymore.

"Yes," I say. "Let's keep going."

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this instead of washing dishes because i've JUST gotten into transformers and wanted to know what's going on in soundwave's noggin <:3c


End file.
